Gemensamma strukturer i isländska sagor

This paper is a morphological structure-analysis of icelandic tales to determine their common and distinguishable components in relation to one another and to the russian folktale with Vladimir Propp’s book Morphology of the Folktale (1968) as theoretical basis. The paper looks at the Poetic Edda and Njals saga and the functions of the actions for each other and for the story as a whole. Although the icelandic tales shows great similarities with the russian folktale in general, it also shows deviations. The functions have sometimes appeared on inverted positions, and in a full third of the stories the evil has won over the good in a crucial struggle, but has in 90 % of these stories still been punished before the end. In seven of the thirty tales the story has ended with a foreboding of misfortune or lack. My conclusion is therefore that the icelandic tales indeed shows a common morphological structure, but also deviations in relation to Propps conclusions which could function as a basis of critique against his theory as well as a foundation for future research to improve his theory.